The Star Citizen Thread v5

[Backer42]

I actually think that the real issue is the fact that chris roberts doesnt know whats possible with current tech.

He doesn't know tech nor game development (despite posing as a programmer in one video).
He doesn't know how to play video games, not even his own one.

The problem is not that there has been a delay. The problem is more that there has been a 1-year delay, every year.

This is how advance-fee/pre-order scams usually work.

Wait... profitable? I thought all of that would go straight into development where it would be the equivalent of 500 million publisher dollars. It's profit now? How much was counted as profit? Well I guess that explains the limited edition Porsche.

Scams are profitable. All you have to do is building fancy tradeshow demos to keep it going and extract enough money by paying yourself huge salaries for multiple job descriptions and "royalties" on top of that. Compare Star Citizen to this:

[video=youtube;4uYkbXlgUCw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uYkbXlgUCw[/video]

 

[dsmart]

With all this talk of an MVP, have CIG actually defined what this is exactly?

Is there a link to an official definition or list of what this means for the release of the game?

Of course not; don't be silly - that would be too logical; and also give the game away (<---- LOL!! see what I did there?)

 

[Asp Explorer]

Ii haven't finished it yet - but watching Sharknado: Heart of Sharkness reminds me more of Star Citizen than anything else

 

[dsmart]

The problem is not that there has been a delay. The problem is more that there has been a 1-year delay, every year. And the only reason we wont have that anymore is because we dont even have a release window any more. Its just... weird.

Community: where is our game?
CIG: Its not here.
Community: We know, why not?
CIG: There was a delay.
Community: Obviously, but when will it be done?
CIG: Not yesterday.
Community: We get that, but when will it be done?
CIG: In the future.
Community: Can you just answer the very basic question?
CIG: Look over there! An Idris!

 

[Marak]

http://imgur.com/ieB6CsI.jpg

It's all your fault Derek - You worked out it was going to fail - You should have said something.

 

[frostypaw]

I can't believe anyone is still pushing the "miracle cure to headbob" thing....

SC went from A->D pointlessly tying the camera to the 3rd person animations, they then produce a video showing a standard 1st person alternate smooth as glass view with a smooth as glass nice weapon position just like any other shooter that stayed at A like sensible folk and they expect us to believe instead SD went from D-Z and right back around with super clever technology that magically ends up looking exactly the same.

It's hilarious SC PR/marketing do you hear me? I'm sure you do - don't patronise people so, that's what's annoying about this. Just say you removed headbob, everyone goes "oh good idea" - claim you've invented a miracle cure that revolutionises 3d gaming and looks just like removing headbob and everyone laughs, you get up all upset that people are laughing and have to tell us off etc.....

just be open like the development of this all is meant to be.

including not claiming you're always meeting and exceeding expectations and wowing people when you've missed deadline after deadline for product, and deadlines you only released a year or so ago. star marine did floor everyone though, very impressive just as you say.

I have played Strike commander and it was a technoligy pushing game at that time. I was at that time totaly into milsim
F19
F15
tornado
Falcon
Chuckyeager.
And that one stand out strike commander.

You must be joking. I was a flightsim nut at that point and SC got played through just the once after me being hugely hyped for it. I was painfully disappointed and it was from there that I started to question any hype for games much more seriously.

 

[milligna]

Strike Commander was a crappy game that played pretty terribly and ran out of steam quickly but it DID have an amusing manual, tho. Origin always did such a nice job on stuff like that.

They should have had a stretch goal to clone Denis Loubet! He was like the pixelized perfected form of the kind of art some 70s guys would have on vans.

 

[lysan]

…which he didn't direct and didn't “helm” in any way — he just pitched in some money.
The one movie he apparently did have some input in (Outlander) ended up a $40M loss.

To be fair I liked outlander

 

[dsmart]

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/53qp8i/upcoming_avocado_26_testing_information/

I know everyone's super excited for 2.6.0 but I wanted to set appropriate expectations. I don't like to speculate (as you know) but we're looking at several weeks of work that have to be done which likely puts us into October before we're ready for Evocati testing.

Please be respectful of your NDA status and keep this information to yourselves. No need to stir people up unnecessarily.
As soon as we have more information on it, you'll be the first to know!


-WL

That's yet another leak from a guy in the Evocati test group.

The irony is that these guys are really upset with him for leaking info.....about their "open development" game. I don't even know what to think anymore, man. This is just too much comedy to comprehend

 

[Osmanthus]

To be fair I liked outlander

And I liked the Wing Commander film before I understood what it means for a movie to be terrible

 

[FuriousMeow]

And I liked the Wing Commander film before I understood what it means for a movie to be terrible

I liked Wing Commander too when it first came out. I was in H.S. (High School for non-US) at the time. I watched it again 2 years ago, and cringed most of the way through it.

 

[McGlashan]

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/53qp8i/upcoming_avocado_26_testing_information/

That's yet another leak from a guy in the Evocati test group.

The irony is that these guys are really upset with him for leaking info.....about their "open development" game. I don't even know what to think anymore, man. This is just too much comedy to comprehend

If it hadn't been leaked then us non-avocado plebs would never have known that 2.6 hadn't been released yet.

But it's funny/sad that they're going to go into CitizenCon having made no tangible progress since GamesCom.

 

[Asp Explorer]

But it's funny/sad that they're going to go into CitizenCon having made no tangible progress since GamesCom.

They'll have shiny new jpegs and maybe a new movie!

What more do you want?

 

[PiLhEaD]

.....What more do you want?

A monkey astride a unicorn, playing 'I am the walrus' on kazoo.

...I took two of the red pills and now my head feels funny...

White courtesy phone for Mr Cobbler...

 

[Zetta]

If it hadn't been leaked then us non-avocado plebs would never have known that 2.6 hadn't been released yet.

But it's funny/sad that they're going to go into CitizenCon having made no tangible progress since GamesCom.

Unfortunately that's the side effect of "EVERYBODY DROP WHAT YOU ARE DOING!!! WE ARE NOW WORKING ON THIS..."

---

That 2.6 info is interesting, a bit more regarding the flight changes

What specifically has been changed?
Complete rebalance of SCM speeds and ship handling
Complete rebalance of all shields for all ships

• These simulate the item2.0 shield item values that will come with a future patch (As such they are approximations of the intended default loadouts)
• Complete rebalance of fuel consumption and fuel tanks for all ships
• Afterburner and boost consumption rates have been adjusted
• Once fuel is depleted you are kicked out of afterburner until enough has regenerated
• Complete rebalance of all missile loadouts for all ships
• All new missile racks have been made
• Every ship has had its missile rack hardpoints adjusted
• All missile rack hardpoints are now editable and missile rack items can be exchanged again

As you can see, every ship in the game has been given a new SCM max speed which is approximately half of what they were before in order to condense the scale of speeds to roughly between 100 and 200m/s. This crunched range has allowed us to keep combat much closer and tweak every ships acceleration (lateral and rotational) to give them all a better feeling that you would associate with a ship of that type and role.
Up to now, certain ships were held as a gold standard, meaning that we had to force values for new ships far beyond where they should naturally sit. Our goal is to nominalize speed and reset the balance across the board. Reducing the SCM speeds has allowed us to keep/tweak the afterburner/cruise speeds close to what they currently are and to put a resource on boost fuel and its management to hop between engagements.
Alongside the flight speed changes, we’re also putting in an early approximation of the shield items that will come online in a future patch for early feedback and a revised default missile loadout for most ships. With the revised loadouts, we’ve created all new missile racks and reenabled the ability to swap them out.


Why have we made these sweeping changes?
As more and more ships have gone into the game, the speeds have slowly crept up to make room for them. The end result is that combat in SCM mode has progressively got worse and further apart. With these increased speeds, undesirable sliding when turning comes in, and with that, more unintended collisions and a general requirement to not fly near any of our cool setups in the world. The changes mean that the management of this boost and afterburner going forward is once again become a viable combat tactic.

 

[Osmanthus]

What does nominalize mean? That they want to make everything seem more like what the flavour text suggests? Or do they mean normalize?

One option makes sense and has a fairly well-defined meaning, the other can only be a buzzword.

 

[Zetta]

What does nominalize mean? That they want to make everything seem more like what the flavour text suggests? Or do they mean normalize?

One option makes sense and has a fairly well-defined meaning, the other can only be a buzzword.

I don't think he actually means normalise or nominalise, what he really means to say is monetise.

 

[Stigbob]

Complete rebalance of SCM speeds and ship handling

As you can see, every ship in the game has been given a new SCM max speed which is approximately half of what they were before in order to condense the scale of speeds to roughly between 100 and 200m/s. This crunched range has allowed us to keep combat much closer and tweak every ships acceleration (lateral and rotational) to give them all a better feeling that you would associate with a ship of that type and role.

I just did a quick speed test in my dirty drive FDL with 2 pips to engines blue-zone is 93 to 223 mps. CiG finally did something sensible they archered stole plagiarized were inspired by ED's combat speed.

Maybe there is hope for SC after all.

 

[Komemiute]

Because Microsoft bought out Digital Anvil and spent best part of 2 years getting the game as left by CR into a releaseable state... after the deadline had already been well missed. EDIT: And the studio had run out of money.

In this case the publisher was the only reason that a game was actually released at all.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

I love FL but I agree with the above. I picked it up at Walmart from the bargain shelf for a tenner back in 2003. Had a good time with it playing the campaign and then put it way. It wasn't until I got a hankering for a space game again that I picked it up and started looking for mods and online communities. Discovery Mod, posted above, makes significant and necessary improvements to the base game, along with all the great stuff Igiss and team have added over the years. The community that went with it was particularly good.

As much as I love it, I would NOT use it as an example of resounding success. The only truly great thing about that game was that it could be modded.

I'd add that every sandbox space game bears the label of "Elite like" - everytime I see a great space opera made by indie developer everyone aims at what Elite made them feel.
Hell- try and google how many remakes are actually available of ELite and how many of FL!
I'd talk about the colossal delusion Strike COmmander was too- but that would be shooting a fish in a barrel.

I'd take the less visually impressive Falcon 3.0 and Chuck YEager Air Combat every day of the week for the mere feeling of actually flying and coherent Synthetic Environment.
Jeezus FAlcon 3.0 itself was such a mileston in gaming development for its Dynamic Campaing and use of Math Co-Processor. Seriously- no match for anyone.

 

[Atres Alfahan]

There is nothing concrete here, because there is no game. The game isn't profitable, the marketing is. No investor (bank, commercial finance company, etc.) will hang their hat on CIG because, at the end of the day, there has to be a product to give the customers. So far, the return for customers (and we can call anyone putting money into this thing post-Kickstarter a customer, due to sales tax, and ship sales - not "ship pledges") has been "well, maybe next year." Much like publishers, actual investors also believe in accountability.

There is no "Therefore the game will be made without question," because there's nothing concrete pointing to that to even make it resemble a fact. And yes, everyone expects something different from SC, because absolutely nothing has been defined. Nothing is firm. Not the eventual end product. Not the roadmap. Hell, even the specs on their "sold" assets end up losing seats. This is why CIG scaled back from farming, news vans, and everything else that actually *creates* more gameplay mechanics and problems, to a nebulous "MVP" that has no timeline to check. The MVP is something they shifted gears toward AFTER they realized they couldn't deliver, not something they were striving toward all along, and planing on building upon it as a strong foundation.

EDIT: This is ultimately what will drive people to find that "unacceptable" line (which quite a few backers have already reached, going by the refunds) - THERE IS NO FOCUS. What is SC? Is it roleplaying? Is it FPS? Arcade space battles? A genuine space sim (there is that space bike, after all)? Trading? Espionage? A 'verse where both men AND women coexist? Can players really have it all? Trying to be too many things to too many people, instead of finding your true audience, will just end up disappointing and frustrating everyone, driving them to find the games that actually DO have the features they want, rather than pale elements mashed together in a very grey...thing.

CIG has zero accountability and zero oversight. That does not make for a good business, especially when no one (not even the backers) can say where their "funding" is going.

You can continue saying this to yourself but the reality with the obvious evidence is a different one.
For CIG it is not a matter anymore if they will find an potential investor in the absolute (and highly unlikely) worst case scenario but rather then which one will give them the best offer.

And the game has a clear focus.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/about-the-game/spaceflight